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Hammond’s Headache

The chancellor is an essential voice of realism about the costs of Brexit but he is losing the argument on wider economic reforms

Philip Hammond is an embattled man. It is likely that the Conservatives’ dismal general election campaign and unexpected rebuff at the polls secured his job as chancellor by leaving a weakened prime minister unable to sack him. Yet the state of the party and the mood of its MPs are so frenetic that Mr Hammond is once again in the firing line.

Mr Hammond provides an essential corrective to the bullish views of some of his colleagues about the ease with which Brexit can be accomplished and Britain’s economic prospects thereafter. Yet some of the dismay about the chancellor’s performance is earned. To justify his continued tenure, Mr Hammond needs to show more imagination in policy and more decisiveness in executing it. The first post-election…